Photography History #09 – Edwin S. Porter: when the outlaw aimed at the audience
A man leans towards the camera. His wide-brimmed hat, moustache and patterned scarf are easy to recognise. Then he lifts his gun and aims straight at us. Without the rest of the film, we would not know what happened before this moment. Yet the gesture is unmistakable: the distance between the screen and the viewer seems to disappear.
This is one of the best-known images from Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery, released in 1903. The outlaw is played by Justus D. Barnes. Even as a single frame, the picture works because every important line leads in the same direction. The gaze, the raised arm and the barrel of the gun all point towards the camera.
In the previous episode, Georges Méliès turned the Moon into a face. Porter approached another problem. How do we arrange separate pieces of recorded action so that an audience can follow one story across different places?
Building a robbery from separate shots
Edison Manufacturing Company released the film in December 1903. The Library of Congress names Porter among those responsible for the production and camera work, alongside other contributors. Some scenes were made in a New York studio; others were filmed in New Jersey. Surviving versions do not all run for exactly the same length, so it is safest to describe the work as a film of roughly twelve minutes.
The plot begins with outlaws forcing a telegraph operator to stop a train. A robbery follows on the railway, then an escape, a pursuit and a confrontation. People move between locations while viewers must connect shots that were recorded separately.
The American Film Institute describes a structure of fourteen scenes. The number matters less than the decision behind it. Each new shot changes what we understand about the previous one. Editing is not simply a break between pictures. It is part of the storytelling.
Where the camera stands
Notice the changing distance. A wide view helps us read the train and the landscape. A closer view draws our attention to a gesture or a face. At other moments, the moving train becomes part of the camera position. According to MoMA, the filmmakers also used double exposure to suggest passing scenery through a window, and some surviving prints include hand-applied colour.
None of these devices needs to be described as the first of its kind. They were tools that filmmakers were learning to combine. What matters here is their practical use. The view from afar tells us where someone is going; the closer view tells us what to watch next.
A photograph can direct attention through a single frame. A moving picture adds another choice: what should the viewer see immediately after this frame? Every cut carries information.
When the audience becomes the target
The shot of the outlaw pointing his gun into the lens does not work like the preceding parts of the chase. It is a separate address to the viewer. The bandit stops looking within the fictional world and looks instead towards the place where the audience sits.
It is tempting to call this the first cinematic close-up or the birth of film storytelling. Those claims overlook earlier experiments. Porter’s achievement is better understood through the way the film assembles a sustained narrative and then disrupts our comfortable position as spectators.
Seen photographically, the lesson is precise. The same person can mean something different depending on distance, direction and surrounding details.
The frame is a decision. In a sequence, the order of the frames is another decision, and it changes the meaning of each image.
A way of looking today
We now watch short videos and picture sequences on our phones without thinking much about how quickly we join one image to the next. The Great Train Robbery makes that process visible. First show enough space to understand an action. Then choose the detail that matters.
Try reversing the opening and final images of a short photo sequence of your own. The photographs have not changed. Does the story still feel the same? Or has the viewer been led through it in a different way?
Sources and image rights
Library of Congress – The Great Train Robbery (1903): https://www.loc.gov/item/00694220/ . Museum of Modern Art – Edwin S. Porter, The Great Train Robbery (1903): https://www.moma.org/collection/works/304708 . American Film Institute Catalog – The Great Train Robbery (1903): https://catalog.afi.com/Film/31841-THE-GREAT-TRAIN-ROBBERY .
Historical image: Edwin S. Porter, The Great Train Robbery, 1903, frame showing Justus D. Barnes. Source: Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_train_robbery_Barnes.jpg . Commons marks the file as Public Domain.